DABS

TITLE OF THE PROJECT: DANUBE–BLACK SEA CONNECTION OF EUROPEAN AND ASIAN ECONOMY,A STEP FOR SUBSTANTIAL GROWTH OF THE BLACK SEA AREA – DABS 

PROJECT WEBSITE: http://dabsea.ro/en

PROGRAMME WEBSITE: http://www.blacksea-cbc.net/

DESCRIPTION

The project “DANUBE – BLACK SEA CONNECTION OF EUROPEAN AND ASIAN ECONOMY, A STEP FOR SUBSTANTIAL GROWTH OF THE BLACK SEA AREA (DABS)” is financed by the Joint Operational Programme “BLACK SEA BASIN 2007-2013”.

The “DANUBE – BLACK SEA CONNECTION OF EUROPEAN AND ASIAN ECONOMY, A STEP FOR SUBSTANTIAL GROWTH OF THE BLACK SEA AREA (DABS)” will contribute to: a) better and more intelligent connections for mobility, trade and energy, b) the economic development of the area by supporting improved access and better connections of the European and Asian economy among ports within the Danube-Black Sea area.

The aim of the project DABS is to contribute to the economic development of the area by supporting improved access and better connections of the European and Asian economy among ports within the Danube-Black Sea area. A good and developed transport contributes significantly to regions’ prosperity. It enables goods to be distributed efficiently and citizens to travel freely. Strengthened cooperation in the transport sector can make a difference in helping the countries from the Black Sea Basin to become economically stronger and politically more stable. Citizens and businesses in the region are the direct beneficiaries of improved access and connections, which aims to reduce the time and resources spent on transportation of goods and passengers. Closer market integration can also help to open up new market opportunities for businesses in the eligible area of the programme.

DELIVERABLES

CVR has to undertake tasks within the following Work Packages (WPs):
WP 1-“MANAGEMENT AND COORDINATION” and WP 2- “COMMUNICATION”

WP 1- MANAGEMENT AND COORDINATION
Roles: The activities are coordinated by the Project coordinator of the Applicant. Each partner has the role of contributing and take part to the decisions as far as his country is involved: i) To prepare and go in deep into the themes to be faced and solved. ii) To take part in the decisions iii) To adequate the project to the lines of development and to report it. Each associate gives the technical contribution to the decisions as far as its specialization is involved. In particular, the touristic experts of CCUP of Associazione Culturale SUD will perform the operational control of the activities in each country partner.
Expected results: a) Team building of the participants; b) To take all the decisions about the project; c) To sensitize the external people invited to the public sessions of the meetings; d) Connection with the parallel experiences of the European and not European cross-roads to create links, synergies, common; e) To create an organizational structure able to assure a continuous push, coordination and modification of the project during and beyond the life of the contribution.
Activities

1.1 Participation to 4 management meetings and a final convention.
1.2 Organization of monthly virtual meetings and video-conference calls through web with the aim of checking the work-in-progress of the project.
1.3 Reporting of project advancement and forecast for the European Commission (3 interim and 1 final technical implementation report), coordinated by the applicant but with the active participation of all the partners.
1.4 Operational, communication and financial management and control of the project. Three functions of the applicant (project coordinator, financial manager, communication manager) take care of the activity and are responsible towards the partners and the E.U. Authority of the effectiveness of the activities and their respect of the plan and the budget approved. All the functions will have a referee in each partner to speed up the relations and overcome bureaucratic passages: their communications will have a protected space inside the website to exchange and share planning, reporting and documentation of the project.
1.5 Assistance to the external auditor of the project accounting, of the financial movements and of the justifications of the expenses and revenues.
1.6 Operating coordination and synchronization of the activities in all the countries, for aligning them to the
lines of the project, for helping the partners to overcome the difficulties, for tuning the internal and external procedures and for keeping alive the team of the partners. A most important task of these visits is
to verify the reliability of the internal process of accounting, documentation and verification of the expenses and the revenues, to inform the financial manager of the Applicant and the external auditor to enable them to fulfill their tasks with a broader vision of the reality.
More specifically, financial manager will undertake the following: At the beginning of the project, every partner creates, according to the instructions received by the financial manager of the applicant, a specific simple project accounting system, integrated with the general accounting of the institution:
• Quarterly, the financial manager of each partner picks up the documents of the eligible expenses, sums them up and aligns them with the physical advancement of the project.
• In the same time, he closes the period of the project accounting system
• Financial manager is responsible of the cash flow and the economic equilibrium of the project, gathers the documentation of the expenses and partners contributions and interfaces the financial manager of the Applicant.
• Keeps the contacts and assists the external auditor.

WP2- COMMUNICATION
The communication strategy is the main support to: give visibility to the project, inform the potential tourists about the travels and their characteristics and help the SMEs working in the project to be known and become effective and competitive in the international market.
The project proposes: destinations open to new localities, beyond the traditional famous places (in Italy: Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice, Verona); hospitality in structures different from the big international chains (Hyatt, Intercontinental, Accor, Holiday Inn); a travel organization different from the well-known tour operators (TUI, Thomas Cook, Alpitour, ClubMed, Kuoni, ...); travels opened to unstable countries (e.g. Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Tunisia); new segments of clients inclined to sustainable tourism (young, old, disabled, people, families). As a consequence, the message: i) must appear under the same brand and logo in all the countries involved in the project, to assure the potential clients about the same relation price/service. ii) In any country involved in the project the voyagers must find supports by structures with the same name (e.g.: Country Focal Point: CFP). iii) Must stress that the voyagers are "adopted" by the local communities. iv) Must be extended to the new BRIC countries in their own language, where a middle class with good spending capacity is growing very fast, where the average age is lower than in the "western countries" and where the tourism abroad is expanding each year at percentages of 2 figures. In these emerged countries most of the cultural, touristic, social needs (and constraints!) have still to be fully discovered. v) Must use different tools of communications (social networks, internet, website, direct communications ...) according to the different segments of voyagers aimed to: vi) Must use sensitization tools of the environment, through a periodic contact with the local media.
The project does not replace the communications made by each SME and target group, (on the contrary: the project requires and supports the websites of the SMEs which are the main source of control by the voyagers on the travels selected through internet and an expression of the policy of transparency of the whole project), but adds new direct lines of contacts in synergy with the individual communications. Every communication includes not only the touristic and cultural news, but also a refresh of the principles of sustainable tourism, of the cultural base of the project and of the European values incorporated into the project.
Roles: The communications are managed, in each country, by a specific function included in an organizational unit operating under the country partner that takes care of all the activities of the project: the Country Focal Point (CFP). All the CFPs are coordinated strategically by the Communication coordinator and, operatively, by the Central Coordination Unit of the Project (CCUP).
Their tasks are: update of the data base, translation in their language of all the communications, delivery of the monthly newsletters, informative assistance, through email, to tourists groups, update the communications through social networks.
Expected results: a) Sensitization of the environment. b) Awareness of this new form of tourism by the potential tourists interested in the sustainable tourism. c) Strengthening of the convincement of the target groups in order to their participation to the project. d) Widening of the perimeter of the target groups, which know and are interest to the participation to the project (other SMEs, destinations, places, target groups, countries).
Quantified outputs: i) 10.000 copies of a printed leaflet. ii) Communication through the project website, weekly updated. iii) 12 bimonthly communications to 50 addressees each country (350 in total): media, public and private institutions = 4.200 communications each year. iv) Monthly communications through social networks in English and in local language: 12 communications through 17 social networks: more than 200 communications each year. v) 2 kits of documentation for sensitization of intermediate schools and communities, translated into the local languages and personalized to each specific country.

Activities
2.1 Creation (external) and supervision of a unique brand and logo under the supervision of Association Sud which coordinates the contributions of all the partners.
2.2 Creation (external) and updating (by the partners) of the website of the project, multi-language, with
specific sections dedicated to: real-time infos and events (see 2.6); conclusions of the; touristic packages and proposals (updated by the TO/TA and by the CFPs see 5.2); main destinations and Centers of Local Culture CLC; data base with all the news and the data about the sites and the SMEs services; place from which to download the App for tourists; recall of the e-learning tool and the models of evaluation of the SMEs; connections with the most frequented social networks; links to target groups websites; protected spaces for transversal communications among same target groups of different countries (municipalities, tour operators and travel agencies, touristic SMEs, institutes of knowledge, schools, cultural and sporting institutions; communities). It will allow to exchange infos, experiences, best practices and interact with the data base of the events.
The most important of these transnational links will connect tour operators and travel agencies and help them to exchange ideas and projects of packages to improve the touristic impact of the project.
2.3 Creation (external) and supervision of the production of a printed leaflet (10.000 copies: 1.000 each country + 3.000 for general purposes: 8 € each) showing the services, the destinations, the events, the activities, the SMEs offering sustainable touristic services. It is a generic document, to be updated no more often than once a year and its relevance is mainly institutional, not operative. It refers to website which is the only authorized source of operative information.
2.4 Creation (external) and supervision of a central data base of local, national and international events and
sustainable enterprises and services involved in the project. This data base is managed by CFPs and CCUP and updated through direct connections and on line data transfers from: municipalities, touristic information offices, touristic departments of the Ministries of Tourism, according to common agreed protocols. The clients of sustainable tourism are generally interested to the opportunities of local contacts and to the events which encourage those contacts. The notices about those events cannot be present in the printed guides but can be downloaded by the visitors from this centralized data base. The activity includes the assistance to partners for using the tool, contacts with the data suppliers, technical and organizational support for alignment the emission of the files with the data base.
2.5 Creation (external) and supervision of an application software downloadable free of charge from the project web site directly into the smart phones or tablets or pc's of the tourists. It will allow them to consult the sites, the local events and the websites of the SMEs of the project. The activity includes the assistance to partners for using the tool. The activity involves both the partners, coordinated by ASC, in stating the specifications and testing the results, and the external IT supplier.
2.6 Monthly electronic newsletters concerning the project, the packages and services, the SMEs and the target groups involved, the events sponsored. They are delivered to: main mass media channels (general and specialized magazines, internet, TV, radios), SMEs, target groups, schools, beneficiaries, both of the countries already partners and of the Mediterranean countries which in future can be associated to the project. The newsletters are mainly edited by CCUP and by CFPs which translate and send them to the final addressees.
2.8 Final international convention (see 1.1) during which will be exposed: the intermediate and final results of the project and the plan of its qualitative and quantitative expansion, the revision of its organization structure, and how to link the ONMEST 2 with other cross roads and international networks operating along with the same development lines. This connection is important to enhance the economy of scale and the synergy of costs and the effectiveness of the project.
The final convention, described in WP1 is the occasion to enhance the international echo impact of the project and to extend the project to other countries.
To this purpose, will be invited not only the target groups, but also: applicants and partners of other adjacent projects, public representatives, NGO, TO/TA of other regions and countries, which afterwards will be informed regularly of the conclusions of the meeting and the follow-up.
2.9 Communications through social networks and translation in partners', not European and not Arab languages. A communication strategy based on the fertilization through Internet contacts will be set up from the very beginning by means of messages not only through the most common social "western" networks (Facebook, Twitter, LInkedin, Myspace, Google+, You Tube), but also through the social networks of the big countries which since some years are more and more interested to tourism in Europe and to its culture and way of life. A specific effort (of knowledge and translation) must be made to sensitize and send messages through Russian (Russia-POCCИЯ, Vcontakte-BKOHTAKTE), Chinese (Sina weibo, RenRen, Peng You), Indian (Orkut, Ibibo, Bharatstudent), Japanese (Mixi, Mobage-town, Gree) social networks since the birth of the project. This effort must take into account also the carrier of the message, because in Japan and China the communications through social networks are made for the 78% (Japan) or 65% (China) through smart-phones and not through PCs (3-10%). This communication tools are the vehicle for co-marketing and co-advertising insertions directed to contribute to co-finance the follow up of the project.
2.10 Printed kits for sensitization of the target groups (see pp. 7.4 and 7.5). The kit will be printed in 5.000 copies (8€ per copy).
2.11 Web-streaming connections. The biggest problem for participation to the meetings and training lessons of the target groups, of the operators and of potential future partners is the distance and cost of meetings essential to fertilize the practice sustainable tourism, to wake up the interest, to share the solutions and to build-up a group for the future expansion of the project. A web streaming connection can overcome most of these problems and really extend the impact of the project.
Communication manager: in each partner organization leads the operations connected to:
• Communication and visibility.
• Realization of the tools of communication; brand and logo, website, leaflets.
• Communication through newsletters and social networks.
• Organization of the meetings.